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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22847959">If I Lay Here</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/violent_ends/pseuds/violent_ends'>violent_ends</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Lucifer Songfics [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Lucifer (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Established Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by Music, Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV) Needs A Hug, POV Lucifer, Panic Attacks, Post-Season/Series 04, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Chloe Decker, Romance, Songfic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 17:21:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,101</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22847959</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/violent_ends/pseuds/violent_ends</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It was the wind hitting his face as soon as he opened the door, he knows. A gust of cold slashing across his skin, a slap of swirling <i>somethings</i> getting stuck in his eyelashes and forcing him to blink.</p>
<p>Snowflakes. Ashes. Snowflakes that are now ashes.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Lucifer Songfics [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1848592</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>262</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>If I Lay Here</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/feartheviolas/gifts">feartheviolas</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I interrupt my regular Fuckruary programming to gift this little thing to feartheviolas, because thanks to her <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22470025/chapters/53690920">drabble collection</a> I started listening to <i>Atlas: Space</i> by Sleeping At Last and then their <a href="https://youtu.be/L2URIAPegF4">cover</a> of <i>Chasing Cars</i> by Snow Patrol popped up on my Spotify, and this happened. I hope you like it, and thank you! ❤</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><i>If I lay here,</i><br/>
<i>if I just lay here,</i><br/>
<i>would you lie with me and just forget the world?</i><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
It was the wind hitting his face as soon as he opened the door, he knows. A gust of cold slashing across his skin, a slap of swirling <i>somethings</i> getting stuck in his eyelashes and forcing him to blink.</p>
<p>Snowflakes. Ashes. Snowflakes that are now ashes.</p>
<p>The Detective rushes past him to walk across the porch and down the steps of the cabin to land in the snow, ridiculous in her pyjamas and too-big blue coat – ridiculous as in, ridiculously beautiful. She looks up at the sky as white flakes land on her forehead, her cheeks, her nose, her lips. As they did with him.</p>
<p>But they were grey. They were <i>grey</i>, he tells himself.</p>
<p>“What are you doing there? Come here, it’s so beautiful!” Chloe calls him, and the snowflakes keep piling up, sticking to her beanie, to her hair of chestnut and gold. They pile up, up, <i>up</i> and he can’t breathe, breathe, <i>breathe</i>.</p>
<p>
  <i>Breathe, Lucifer.</i>
</p>
<p>He grips the side of the doorframe to steady himself, then slowly takes the steps required – going <i>down</i> as he once did, crossing an invisible barrier that is now a simple wooden stair. The cover provided by the porch ends abruptly, and then he’s in the snow. <i>Under</i> the snow, and under the ashes.</p>
<p>He shivers, but not from the cold.</p>
<p>“I love this!” Chloe announces, tongue sticking out to taste, much like her offspring would do. A floating piece of ice swirls in the air to land in her open mouth, and she swallows it, and it melts.</p>
<p>But in Hell, ashes do not melt. They choke.</p>
<p>He almost reaches out to stop her, to cradle her face in his hands and seal her lips shut with his own. No ash should ever fall on his beloved, nor clog her throat and force her to cough.</p>
<p>But it might. Somehow, there is still a chance it might.</p>
<p>The world flickers, and the white backdrop behind her turns black, pitch-black. The trees further ahead are tall spires of stone, trapping her, and the gap in between that leads into the woods is a door awaiting her undeserving soul. And she is not laughing as she is, but screaming, crying, begging.</p>
<p>
  <i>How could you let this happen, Lucifer?</i>
</p>
<p>His throat constricts, and suddenly he’s sitting in the snow, one hand pressed against his chest to calm his quickened breathing, heart pumping wild and desperate under his palm. He knows what this is called, knows the instructions to follow.</p>
<p>
  <i>Place one hand on your chest, the other on your stomach. Breathe slowly through your nose, feel your stomach expand as you inhale. Focus on the way the air fills your lungs, then-</i>
</p>
<p>But no, he can’t do that, he can’t fill his lungs with <i>this</i> air, he will choke, he-</p>
<p>“Lucifer? Lucifer, what’s wrong?” the Detective gasps as she drops at his side, kneeling in the midst of a cotton-white sea – white, yes, <i>white</i>. She, too, knows what this is called, but she still wants to know why, always needs to understand the disease to be the cure. “Talk to me, tell me.”</p>
<p>He shakes his head at her, wide-eyed and frantic, because he absolutely <i>cannot</i> tell her, cannot scare her like that. He brought her here to make her happy. Demons, inner ones or in the flesh, have no place where the Devil's first and only love walks the Earth.</p>
<p>So his fierce Detective changes tactics, unable to accept defeat. She places her hands on his knees, grounding him, and talks him through it like she was taught. Her voice, unlike his own, doesn’t falter once.</p>
<p>“..on the way the air fills your lungs, then exhale and release it through your mouth. Feel your stomach with your hand as you do, concentrate on it- yes, just like that, you’re doing so good, Lucifer.”</p>
<p>But he doesn’t focus on his breathing, not really: what grounds him in the moment is the blue of her eyes. It’s all he can see, all he <i>wants</i> to see, and this is all he ever wants to be: just a man staring into a woman’s eyes as they grow old. As <i>she</i> grows old.</p>
<p>Chloe doesn’t even blink. Her gaze is fixed on him as she nods encouragingly – she is here, not <i>there</i>, and <i>he</i> is here, with her. Surrounded by snow, surrounded by grace. Hers, and who knows, maybe his, too.</p>
<p>When he feels himself relaxing, he rests one hand on his thigh and reaches out with the other, looking for hers. Chloe grips it tightly, then laces their fingers together. Three little words dance on the tip of his tongue, but they are not enough, and none of the languages he knows, not even his own, has something better to offer.</p>
<p>But she knows. She <i>knows</i>.</p>
<p>“Do you want to get up now?” she asks, lifting her other hand to brush his hair away from his forehead and cup the side of his face, delicate thumb rubbing melting ice into his skin. Ash would never feel so soothing, and the reminder is a blessing, one that doesn’t come from Heaven but that is only holier because of it.</p>
<p>For she is no damned soul, could never be – she is Persephone, queen of all his darkest places, and flowers bloom from the barren soil of Hell under her touch. <i>His</i> barren soil. His barren <i>soul</i>.</p>
<p>But once again, Lucifer shakes his head. “Lie down with me,” he pleads.</p>
<p>Chloe smiles and lets him pull her down with him, until she’s lying on her back in the snow next to him, their shoulders touching through their heavy coats. Their fingers are still locked together between them, and she squeezes hers intermittently, making him aware of her presence.</p>
<p>Lucifer looks up, and she does too. Snow falls on them, two corpses abandoned at the edge of Creation, Adam and Eve in a garden crumbling around them.</p>
<p>“I wish I could forget,” he says, for once a sorcerer casting a spell on himself to voice his own desire. “I wish we were the only two people in the whole world.”</p>
<p>“We are.” Chloe doesn’t miss a beat. She lies so sweetly for him sometimes. “We <i>are</i>, Lucifer.”</p>
<p>He turns toward her, lost. How can they be? How can she say that?</p>
<p>But when she lets go of his hand to cup his face and kiss him, he gets it.</p>
<p>They are. They <i>are.</i></p>
<p>And the garden around them is bursting into life.</p>
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